The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether the Clean Water Act can prevent sewage plants from putting waste water into the ground if it flows from there into a river, bay or the ocean.

The case from Hawaii is an important test of the reach of the federal government’s anti-pollution authority.

Environmentalists sued alleging a sewage plant in Maui was discharging treated waste water into the ground and it was flowing underground from there into the Pacific Ocean.

They won before a federal judge and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which held that the pollution was subject to federal control because it was the “functional equivalent of a discharge into the navigable water.”

But the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from Hawaii that was backed by the Assn. of California Water Agencies. Their lawyers called the 9th Circuit’s ruling a “radical expansion” of federal authority. If upheld, its approach would extend new federal regulation to water treatment plants across the country, they said.

The Clean Water Act calls for preventing discharge of pollutants into the “navigable waters of the United States.” Water agencies say the law refers only to polluted water flowing directly into streams, rivers and bays, not groundwater.

For more than a decade, the justices have been split over how far the federal government can go to regulate water inside the United States, whether it be wetlands, or, as in this case, groundwater. The court’s conservatives have argued the federal government can only regulate polluted water that flows directly into a river, bay or the ocean. The law forbids discharges of pollutants into “the waters of the United States.”

But environmentalists as well as the court’s liberal justices have said this authority can extend farther inland to prevent pollution that will eventually flow into rivers and bays.

The case, County of Maui vs. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, is scheduled to be heard in the fall.

14 Dec, West Hawaii Today. When it comes to agricultural technology and resource management, Hawaii is finding a partner in collaboration nearly halfway around the world.

“There’s so much good that can come out of a collaboration between Israel and Hawaii,” said Eitan Weiss, deputy chief of mission at the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles.

Weiss was on Hawaii Island for the Western Governors’ Association Winter Meeting at the Fairmont Orchid. In an interview with West Hawaii Today, Weiss said he also used the opportunity to talk with Gov. David Ige about opportunities for Israel and Hawaii to work together on making the most of limited resources.

Among those is the availability of and access to freshwater along with solutions like desalination and water recycling.

Israel, Weiss said, leads the world in water recycling, for example.

A 2016 article published in Scientific American said Israel’s water treatment systems recapture 86 percent of the country’s water to be reused for irrigation.

The second-most-efficient country when it comes to water recycling, the article said, is Spain, which recycles 19 percent of its water.

According to state data, Hawaii reused 17.2 million gallons of water a day in 2016, a rate of about 12.8 percent of the total wastewater treated. The Wai Maoli: Hawaii Fresh Water Initiative, which the Hawaii Community Foundation created in 2013, is targeting the state to reuse 30-plus million gallons per day by 2030.

“We have a lot to offer on those technologies,” Weiss said. “Not just the desalination process but also the reclamation of the water, because we understand that you don’t have to invest a lot of money and efforts in order to make the water drinkable again.”

Abstract

October: The largest freshwater spring complex in the Hawaiian Islands discharges groundwater into Pearl Harbor, Oahu, which is the largest estuary in the islands. This discharge occurs as subaerial and submarine springs, as non‐point‐source (diffuse) seepage, and as baseflow to streams. We conducted airborne thermal infrared remote sensing surveys of sea surface temperatures and ocean‐based 222Rn surveys of surface and deep waters to evaluate the efficacy of combining these methods to locate and quantify these differing groundwater discharges to the harbor. High spatial‐resolution (≤ 3.2 m) sea surface temperature data were advantageous for identifying and differentiating point‐source and diffuse groundwater discharge. Surveys of surface waters for 222Rn confirmed point‐source and diffuse seepage zones identified from the sea surface temperature maps. The 222Rn mid‐ and deep‐water surveys were crucial for locating benthic seepage not detectable by the remote sensing method. Groundwater discharge estimates from radon time‐series data agreed with radon surface water survey estimates. Fresh groundwater discharge estimates were also of the same order of magnitude as previous hydrologic estimates of spring discharge. We produced linearly and highly correlated relationships between plume areas and groundwater discharge by combining the thermal infrared and radon techniques. Such relationships may provide a way to up‐scale local groundwater discharge assessments to a regional area.

To see the full report see: https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lno.11033

October: The Hawai’i Section of the American Water Works Association and the Hawai’i Water Environment Association are proud to announce the annual joint conference now known as the Pacific Water Conference at the Hawai’i Convention Center. The conference typically consists of a single pre-conference day with focused trains of technical presentations, followed by multiple days of conference sessions.

Residents of Hawaii have survived several major deluges this year. And scientists say a warming climate may make such record-breakers ever more common.

One year ago, Hurricane Harvey shattered the U.S. record for most rain to come down in a single storm. Last month, another hurricane dropped record rains, this time on Hawaii. Named Lane, its measured tally would seem to be the highest ever for this island state, and second nationally only to what Harvey unleashed on Texas.

The previous record for a tropical cyclone in Hawaii was measured at Kanalohuluhulu Ranger Station. That was during Hurricane Hiki in 1950.

The National Weather Service in Honolulu has now confirmed that Lane dropped 132.13 centimeters (52.02 inches) of rain between August 22 and 26. That total comes from an official government rain gauge on the Big Island (named Hawaii). “The previous record was 132.08 centimeters (52.00 inches),” the NWS reported in an August 27 statement. This, it concluded, shows that “Hurricane Lane has broken the Hawaii tropical cyclone storm-total rainfall record.”

However, NWS pointed out, this record will stand only “pending verification.” Confirming the feat requires a special probe. A meteorologist at the NWS forecast office said that could take months.

August, Circle of Blue, Using the Global Terrorism Database, a team of researchers from Florida International University discovered that water-related terrorism has risen by 263 percent from 1970 to 2016. The researchers identified 675 water-related incidents in 71 countries, and found that water infrastructure was the most common target of water-related terrorism. New Security Beat

West Hawaii Today; Max Dible, 25 June 2018: Every day cesspools throughout Hawaii send an excess of harmful nutrients pouring into nearshore ocean water and threatening to infiltrate the freshwater drinking supply. Hawaii island is home to tens of thousands of them representing nearly half of the known cesspools used throughout the state. With the deadline of 2050 to shut down every one of them, the State Department of Health has scheduled informational community meetings in both Kailua Kona and Hilo…

…When cesspool seepage intermingles with ground water, it can find its way into aquifer drawn on by the county. This is generally less of a concern at the deep well sites, which can range between 1,000 and 2,000 feet in depth and supply Hawaii island with most of its drinking water…

It’s impossible and fiscally irresponsible to have discussions about future investments in grid infrastructure without considering their implications for regional resilience: the capability to withstand catastrophic weather or natural disasters without prolonged electricity outages.

That adage applies equally to both remote islands heavily reliant on offshore sources of fuel, such as Hawaii or Puerto Rico, and towns and cities on the mainland vulnerable to sea level rises or destructive winds, particularly coastal communities.

“Our existing system is highly vulnerable,” acknowledged Hawaii Public Utility Commissioner Jay Griffin during a VERGE Hawaii session last week about the benefits of “electrifying everything,” including transportation services and the heating and cooling loads of buildings.

Interdependencies are exacerbated, you start to see a cascading impact.

The notion that solar plus storage technology plus intelligent local distribution services could short-circuit lengthy blackouts is appealing to many across the Hawaiian island archipelago, currently grappling with the system strain caused by unprecedented floods on Kauai and volcanic activity on the Big Island.

“The ability to fuel ourselves with electricity produced here — not just to have electricity but to fuel our transportation — that seems to me a much more resilient than the one we have today,” Griffin said. Currently, renewable energy accounts for about one-quarter of Hawaii’s electricity generation. The island imports millions of gallons of oil annually, to fuel its power plants, despite its mandate to transition to 100 percent renewables by 2045.

The good news is that the trend toward commercial investments in distributed generating resources — including wind, solar, biomass and energy storage systems — aligns closely with that goal. The trick is to ensure that all the stakeholders across a region — including local utilities, government agencies, businesses and private citizens — are considered in the strategic plan, according to many experts speaking last week at VERGE Hawaii.

Today, many relevant conversations about resilience happen in a vacuum, they noted. That is, they are confined to a single government agency or business. “We are planning specifically,” said Kyle Datta, general partner of investment firm Ulupono Initiative.

Here’s why sharing information matters

Cross-agency and cross-sector conversations are important for identifying scenarios that might affect response times or the locations chosen for investments in microgrids and generating resources.

For example, in Honolulu, there are about 20 water pumps used to manage the freshwater supply, but there currently is backup power in place for only seven. If some portion of the grid can’t be restored promptly, there could be a full-blown health crisis, Datta noted. Similarly, many electric utilities don’t spend enough time understanding the impact on telecommunications, he said. “What is the value of having an extra day of recovery?”

Groundwater that seeps into the coastal zone beneath the ocean’s surface–termed submarine groundwater discharge (SGD)–is an important source of fresh water and nutrients to nearshore coral reefs throughout the globe. Although submarine groundwater is natural, it can act as a conduit for highly polluted water to shorelines. A recently published study, led by researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), sheds light on the ways SGD affects coral reef growth.

“SGD is common on nearshore coral reefs, especially in Hawai’i, so we set out to test how SGD affects coral reef growth in Maunalua Bay, O’ahu.” said Megan Donahue, associate researcher at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in SOEST and senior author of the study.

Two processes contribute to the overall growth of coral reefs: coral growth and bioerosion, the natural breakdown of coral reefs by reef organisms. To determine how SGD affects these processes, the research team outplanted small pieces of lobe coral on the reef flat in areas with a range of SGD and measured the changes in size over a six-month period. They also put out blocks of dead coral skeleton across the same SGD gradients for one year to measure bioerosion rates. The blocks were scanned before and after the deployment with a micro-CT scanner, similar to a hospital CT scanner, to determine the amount of coral skeleton removed by bioeroding organisms in three dimensions.

In areas with high levels of SGD, it was a double whammy for coral reefs. Corals that were right next to SGD seeps performed poorly, likely due to the stress of too much fresh water.